[Zope] Any more consultants on this list?

[Andrew Bunner]

  We are putting together a set of design goals for the next revision of one of
the web sites we manage. The site (http://www.elitefitness.com) aspires to be
portal-esque in nature and looks like a good fit for Zope.

  I'm writing the list to solicit the names of Zope developers/companies who
would be interested in installing, configuring and customizing Zope to meet our
needs. If you or your employer is available for projects like this, drop me an
email and I'll send you a more "meaty" document later this week.

  Breifly and in order of importance, our primary goals are:

1) To simplify the task of content management to the point where employees of
Elite Fitness can, with little training or knowledge of HTML, add articles to
the site. We would like the articles to automagically get formatted in the
right way (i.e. With site-branding fluff around the content) and to appear in
the right indices (i.e. If the author indicates the new article is about
supplements, a link to the article should appear in a place where we've decided
to group those links)

2) To enable Geocities/Xoom-like hosting of fitness-oriented web sites to
anyone who signs up for one. e.g. If I register as user 'hug3D00d', I can
create content that's viewable at http://elitefitness.com/members/hu3D00d
... or
some similar URL.

3) To allow personal trainers to enter contact information and create a web
page (hosted freely on Elite Fitness). The idea is to build a database of
personal trainers so that visitors can query by geographical location and bring
up the trainer's data and web page

4) To allow "featured writers" to add articles to the site in special branch of
the navigation hierarchy. Only people who've received the distinction of
"featured writer" may add content to this area, and then they are only allowed
to modify documents that they created

5) To be able to make site-wide HTML formatting changes without editing each
page individually. I know Zope makes it easy to do this. We just want someone
who knows how to do it well.

6) This is the kicker... to unify registration for the free web space, our
affiliate program (LinkShare - http://www.linkshare.com), our discussion boards
(eShare - http://boards.elitefitness.com) and our mailing list (UnityMail -
http://www.unitymail.com). We'd like people to click "Join The Elite Fitness
Community", fill out some information and then find themselves with a web page,
access to our eShare discussion boards, an (optional) subscription to our
mailing list, and the ability participate in our affiliate program by just
adding some special links to their new home page.

  If I was doing it in Perl, I'd use HTTP::Request::Common and LWP::UserAgent
to automate the form submissions. It's trickier than it sounds because you have
to check to see that registration actually succeeded with eShare and LinkShare.
eShare, I know is very picky about what's an acceptable name. In addition to
being unique, it has to also pass through a filter that weeds out obscenities
and names that are "too similar" to existing names.

  This is more than a bit vague because we are still spec-ing out exactly what
navigation hierarchy and features we want.

  The scope of the project does not include doing any HTML design work (unless
you happen to be really good at that, too). We were planning on having a
graphics design deliver a set of HTML templates to be Zope-ified so that new
pages of a particular type would get the right template.

  If you'd like me to mail you some more specific information about the project
later this week, please indicate your interest/availability by mailing me.

  Thanks in advance to any that respond!

  Also, I've just been lurking on the list for a day or so, but I see that <%
%> is being debated versus some other options to tag python code. Why not use
the XML syntax for processing instructions?
http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-xml-19980210#sec-pi ... something like <?zope ...
?> or <?python ... ?> 

-- Andrew

   Andrew Bunner
   President, Mass Quantities, Inc.
   bunner@massquantities.com
   Professional Supplements for the Perfect Physique
   http://www.massquantities.com